Martineau Society member, David Hamilton, writes:
I recently came across an anomaly in Harriet Martineau’s Biographical Sketches (1876 edition). As part of her journalistic endeavours, Harriet wrote a series of ‘autobiographical fragments’ or obituaries for the Daily News. Her fifty sketches were obituaries of notable nineteenth century figures and included Frances Beaufort. I had known of Beaufort as the originator of the ‘Beaufort Scale’ who had regained my attention in a recent volume on the history of meteorology (Peter Moore, The Weather Experiment: the Pioneers who sought to See the Future, London: Vintage, 2015, pp. 88 & 133). Moore repeatedly turns to Beaufort’s life history, noting his connection, for instance, with Charles Darwin and Robert Fitzroy (captain of Darwin’s Beagle). My recollection of Beaufort is different since he is also remembered as the creator of the Beaufort Scale running from 0 (calm) to 12 (hurricane), a measure based on visual and subjective observation of voyaging sailors. It is still reported in weather forecasts.
Irish-born Francis Beaufort (1794-1857) was descended from French Protestant Huguenots. He started life as a seaman who kept detailed nautical charts prompted perhaps by the fact that aged 15, he had been shipwrecked due, he claimed, to a faulty chart. While convalescing, Beaufort’s helped his brother-in-law (Richard Edgeworth) to erect a semaphore line between Dublin and Galway.
Having returned to a naval life, Beaufort became a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1829 and, in the same year, was appointed the British Admiralty Hydrographer to the Navy. For this period of Beaufort’s life, Moore relies on Martineau’s obituary. Beaufort is recalled by Harriet, for transforming a forgotten map depot, a location that was ‘small cheerless, out of the way, altogether unfit and inadequate’, into what Moore characterises as ‘a hotbed of ideas and enterprise (p. 88). As Harriet noted in her Sketch, Beaufort was not only a ‘priceless treasure to his country’ but also a ‘benefactor to the world’. Indeed, On 28th December 1838, thirty-two years after it was first jotted down, the Admiralty officially adopted the Beaufort Scale for naval use.
Yet curiously, Harriet’s 18-page biography of Rear-Admiral Sr Francis Beaufort makes no mention of the Beaufort scale. Why?